Treble-winning boss Rodgers — whose side could today equal a 100-year British record of 62 domestic matches unbeaten against Kilmarnock — joked: “They’d be doing all right, wouldn’t they?

“No, listen, there are enough good managers out there who will want the job. The big clubs, there are big pressures to deliver and that’s what they’ll want the next manager to do, once they get him in.”

Rodgers revealed he once thought he was having a heart attack as he struggled to deal with the pressure of management.

He said: “I had an incident when I left Liverpool and I went to Dubai. I lay one night thinking I was having a heart attack.

“I was rushed to hospital and it was basically a reaction in the body, the tightening of everywhere, the chest and everything, and it was starting to condition itself in terms of not having
that pressure.

“That made me sit up and figure out how to manage pressure and regulate it.”

Rodgers is looking forward to facing up to old friend and new Killie boss Stevie Clarke.

He added: “He’s an excellent coach and a real football man and he sets his teams up really well.

“It’s a coup for Killie getting him.

Rodgers yesterday launched his auto- biography ‘The Road to Paradise’, proceeds of which will go to children’s hospices across Scotland and the Northern Ireland Hospice.